


Love Bites So Deep

by Hannah



Series: Autumn's Advancing [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:27:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23866771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah
Summary: When you swallow someone whole, you are bound to choke.Five moments from six decades.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: Autumn's Advancing [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1515974
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	1. Los Angeles, California, 2004

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [YellowB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowb/pseuds/yellowb), [wolf_shadoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolf_shadoe), and [Niamh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niamh/pseuds/Niamh) for beta reading, [Sandy_S](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandy_s/) for giving this a deep set of edits, and [Petra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/profile), [KelasParmak](https://kelasparmak.tumblr.com/), and [Andtheyfightcrime](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/andtheyfightcrime/profile) for holding me accountable. Title and summary come from "Tiger Teeth" by Walk The Moon.

Andrew, bless his soul, couldn’t lie to save his life. Buffy had seen him try. Keep a secret, sure. He was generally pretty good at that. Lying, though? To anyone _other_ than himself? The sort of bold-faced direct delivery of a known falsehood? Not a skill he’d ever had. It took one to know one.

Which wasn’t something about him she always minded. Sometimes she was even grateful for it.

Like now. 

Well, sort of grateful, anyway. She’d have gone to Cordelia’s funeral in any case no matter who else she knew would be attending.

Spike didn’t seem all that thrilled to be there himself.

It was awkward and uncomfortable, and on some level, Buffy figured it was _supposed_ to be awkward and uncomfortable because it was a funeral for someone neither of them had been close to – not for a long time, for her, or ever, for Spike. Cordelia mattered to people they themselves were close to, and her death had hit those people hard. So Buffy and Spike happened to be attending the same ceremony for the benefit of their friends. Not together but certainly at the same time. Commemorating someone’s death wasn’t often a happy, festive thing. Remembering Cordelia’s life with joy would take time. Because this was Cordelia Chase, everyone knew she’d have insisted on something beautiful and made sure all the guests had a good time. The memorial service hadn’t owed anything to any particular belief system, just good old-fashioned existentialist humanism. It’d been simultaneously grand and tasteful, as befitting the woman they were all going to miss.

After the service, Buffy and Spike found themselves at the back of the reception hall, Spike avoiding eye contact and Buffy furtively glancing back at the open bar and trying to figure out how to politely ask if she could just have a bottle of tequila instead of drinking through it one shot at a time.

Two days after Dana arrived in Hampshire, Andrew fumbled his way through a personal retelling of the mission’s events that didn’t _quite_ match up to the written report and folded like a bad hand at a cheap table when Buffy pressed him for details. As soon as he was done with the real version, Buffy called up Wolfram and Hart and demanded Angel put Spike on the line. That conversation, and the three following it, had been less awkward than this.

“Lovely ceremony,” Spike offered.

“She’d have liked it,” Buffy replied. “The whole…everyone, and everything.”

“Nice of them to make arrangements for the ghost.”

“ _Great_ singing.”

“Angel always could give a speech.”

“She meant a lot to him. To me. Everybody she met.”

“Would’ve liked to know her better,” Spike said. “Only spoke to her a couple of times –” 

Buffy snorted out a laugh. “Threatening someone counts as a conversation?”

“It did for her. She was never fearful, that girl. Never thought anything of putting herself at risk to protect her own. A fine lady.”

“She was a good friend.” Something bleak and fatalistic slid through Buffy’s mind. A funeral-inappropriate giggle wound itself through her throat, and try as she did to focus her thoughts on tequila shots, on being back in her childhood city, on _anything_ else, it forced itself out of her mouth, cleaving a path for actual, genuine laughter to follow along in – _Follow along in its wake, oh God, its wake_. She clamped her hand over her mouth, hard, but a few thin wheezes managed to squeeze through her fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the laughter go until she could feel herself getting back under control. She wiped her eyes, and one last, small chuckle slid out.

“What brought that on?” Spike asked lightly.

“Nothing. Just…” She wiped her eyes. “Just, I’m thinking, I’m too young for funerals to be the only times I see some people.”

“Never too young for that.” He hummed, considering. “Though there’s usually another apocalypse coming ’round. Those are always good for bringin’ people together.”

“Oh, _God_ , Spike,” she moaned, happily, dropping her head into her hand. “That’s _worse.”_

“And funny.”

“Not…not right now. Please. Okay?” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out over the rest of the room. Nobody was doing more than glance at them. Nobody was there to see them, not even Angel. The stories of their relationship paled in comparison to the _actual_ reason for the gathering. Everyone was there for Cordelia. Even Spike was paying respects to someone he’d admired and would be driving a few of the Wolfram and Hart crew home later. 

Spike’s hand was cold on her shoulder, a solid comfort, pressing gently, grounding her softly and lifting away.

She turned to finally look him in the eyes – his sparkling, bright eyes. He was glad and sad and mad to see her, British _and_ American mad, both at the same time. She could see herself reflected in them; he couldn’t see himself smiling in hers. When she thought about it, in a meta-physical spiritual way, it seemed monstrously unfair he couldn’t see himself in her eyes the way she could see herself in his. But that was what being a vampire was.

They’d had excuses and justifications and a few juicy rationalizations, good ones and bad ones and a few that were just _convenient._ He was healing from getting his hands cut off. She was running all over the world to find everyone who’d been Called, from women in their nineties to girls as young as four. He was getting his feet back underneath him and trying to figure out who he was and how to fight the good fight. She was keeping on with battling evil where it reared its head because she had more help than she’d ever imagined and some people just took that as an invitation to start fighting nasty. Both of them were afraid they wouldn’t be welcomed by the person they most wanted to see.

They weren’t trying to avoid the awkwardness they knew had been coming. That, they could both handle. They’d gotten the worst of the _why didn’t you say you came back, why didn’t you reach out, why didn’t you try to get in touch right away, why didn’t you ask, why didn’t you come, why didn’t you, why, why, why_ out of the way when he’d been in the hospital bed with Fred holding the phone up to his ear. Where they were now was the only reason that really meant anything. When you knew something would hurt, no matter how much you were aware it would be good for you to get it over with, you did what you could to avoid that pain.

“You still in Rome?”

“Back in Hampshire for a while.” She shrugged. “There’s a couple women I’m meeting in Budapest next week, then it’s back to the new home base.” It wasn’t a Watcher academy anymore and it wasn’t officially a headquarters of anything yet. It was a substantial enough estate they couldn’t just call it _the building_ and pretend to be classy CIA spies. Calling it _home base_ was the only thing that’d stuck.

“Nice city, Budapest. Haven’t been around there in a while, but if you’ve got a moment for it, the –”

“They got a red light district?”

“No! God, no.” He laughed. “Take a boat and see the city from the water. Beautiful at night.”

“It’ll be a working trip. I can’t promise anything. But I’ll let you know if I get to it. I’ll give you a call after the trip’s over and tell you then.” 

“That a promise?”

“That it is.”

“Buy you a drink?” He nodded at the bar.

She didn’t point out that it was an open bar. He’d probably been waiting months to say that to her, and she wasn’t about to ruin his moment. “Just one.” She allowed. “To start.”


	2. Washington, District of Columbia, 2005

Buffy remembered reading somewhere that the White House had official china sets for each president’s administration. It probably shouldn’t have surprised her that for the regular meeting rooms, even if the meetings weren’t themselves all that regular, they had the same mugs as in the gift shop. It couldn’t just be to make sure people remembered where they worked. Anya probably would’ve had something to say about consistent branding and marketing, or maybe commented on the advantage of buying nonperishable goods in bulk quantities.

In any case, the mug did the job of giving Buffy something to drink coffee out of and keep her hands busy.

The thing with there being people who made coffee, and people who drank coffee, was that the ones who made the coffee, made it so the people who drank it _didn’t_ have to make it. That way, the people who drank it could go on with everything else they were supposed to be doing. It wasn’t the kindest or most efficient system possible – maybe regular rotations of coffee-making assignments so everyone got the chance to drink some – but it was the system Buffy was currently living inside. As happy as she was to drink the coffee, for all that she could add to the room right now, she might as well be making some. It’d be nice to do something _besides_ drink the coffee.

All she’d managed to effectively contribute to the morning’s meeting had been a few choice murmurs of agreement or disagreement and pointing out that Lorne had more experience paying property taxes than she did so they should ask him about that instead of her.

“If we start now, we can get the first round of leaks and denials out by mid-June.” Xander flipped the memo page over and kept scribbling. “What were the usual Sunnydale lines?”

“Gas leaks and gangs on PCP,” Robin said. “Though that’ll have to change – isn’t meth the coverup drug of choice right now?”

“We used flu outbreaks a couple of times,” Riley offered. “Most of the files and manuals were moved offsite when we pulled out. I’m sure Wilkins had something in those we can use.” 

“How many leaks are we discussing?” Secretary Copeland asked. “If what we’re after is enough for the public _not_ to automatically dismiss a few fringe cranks…please, ballpark it. Are we looking at two to three a month?”

“We’re after enough that once we _do_ go forward and reveal the honest reality of the world, people will all say ‘I knew it’ instead of rioting.” Xander shrugged. “Using leaks to make the end story more palatable is a time-honored US tradition.”

“Whatever you decide, don’t keep these press conferences on a regular schedule.” Lorne tapped his fingernails against the table. “Stay irregular. A week, three weeks, week and a half, I know it seems like keeping a strict timetable’s a solid idea, but you need to make sure nobody knows when the next one’s coming. They’ll be all the more interested when it finally arrives. Get them listening to what’s being said, keep them from dismissing it all outright. _Then_ you start upping the frequency.”

“At what point in this do we alert the, ah, communities in question?” Secretary Lawrence was studiously taking notes and very much not looking up to make eye contact with anyone. Not even Buffy.

“It’s fine to say demon,” Lorne said gently. “I _assure_ you, it’s not a slur. Nobody’s coming after you for using it.”

“Yes, I know, but – I’m sorry, it’s…” Lawrence grimaced. “Is it like saying ‘human’ or is it like saying ‘American’? I’m still not sure.”

“It’s more like saying ‘mammal,’” Gunn told him. “No, sorry, that’s not quite it. Saying ‘demon’ is like saying _vertebrate.”_

“Taxonomic claves aren’t why we’re here today. Census issues are tomorrow.” Xander rubbed under his eyepatch, a move Buffy knew made most people uncomfortable and more willing to go along with what he wanted. “We can skip ahead if you want, but I was hoping to make some headway on figuring out how much time we have now so we can panic more effectively later.”

Buffy’s phone buzzed gently in her pocket. She pulled it out and made a show of putting on a surprised face. “Sorry,” she said to the room, “Slayer Council business. I’ll be right back.” Everyone waved her off, and she stepped out into the hallway and around a corner to get a tiny bit of privacy. Thank all the gods and goddesses of each and every Heaven for cell phones.

“Hey,” she said quietly. “Thanks.”

“That bad in there, is it?” Spike asked.

“It’s not terrible. It’s just…I can’t offer much when it’s getting to the practical points of using the conspiracy angle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be _in_ the room. It’s nice to be invited. It’s not that I want them to be asking about demon-slaying. I’m just not sure why they want me there.”

“Pull the other one.”

“Okay, yeah, I’m pretty sure why. It’s more that I want to contribute something more to this than representing Slayers and drinking coffee.”

“Put it that way and it’s a pretty solid gig for a few days’ work.”

“Quiet, you,” she teased. “Don’t make me even more thankful to be here.”

“It sounds like things are going all right, if doing nothing’s all you’re complaining about.” She heard some faint sounds: a window closing, papers moving.

“How are things over there?”

“Wesley…” Spike sighed. “He’s twitchy today. Keeps askin’ for Charlie. Nothing’s really getting inside, so tomorrow’s gearin’ up for a mess one way or another.”

Four days after the grand battle of the Black Thorn, while they’d been counting the dead and tending to the dying, Wesley had walked into the Hyperion hotel, naked and not a scratch on him. The set of hermetic wards he’d set up a year before the battle – right around when he’d began working for Wolfram and Hart – had done their job of bringing him back. It didn’t take that many days to figure out they’d worked well enough but not perfectly. The twitchiness had been easy to dismiss at first as post-battle fatigue, and Buffy could vouch for forgetfulness as an early side effect of resurrection. And honestly, she’d been so happy to have someone else to talk to about what it felt like to come back to life she hadn’t wanted to notice the real problems.

Most days, it was useful to have someone close to Willow’s caliber of magical aptitude and skill around. He’d single-handedly resolved the mess with the Tiyurian clans last November. It was that when someone now capable of casually wielding that kind of power forgot what he was holding in his hands, he needed someone around who could handle what he could throw out when things got glitchy inside his head, one way or another.

“And everyone else?” She pressed herself against the wall as someone with an armful of folders walked past. “Anything to write home about?”

“Can’t say there is. Same usual business, girls getting itchy for a decent skirmish, men having trouble getting used to their place in your new world order, you checkin’ in on us when we’re all doing fine over this side of the pond.” 

_“You_ were the one who called _me,”_ she said.

“Yeah, ’cause you asked me nicely.” He huffed out. “Keep talking like that, I might not give you a ring tomorrow.” 

“How about I call you?” she let slip, then pressed a hand against her eyes. _Stupid, stupid playfulness._

Also, stupid, stupid, non-breathing vampires, because if it was someone living on the other end, she’d be able to guess what they were feeling from the sound of their breathing. With Spike, not so much. Just the quantity of the silence.

“The old woman,” he said, sidestepping her suggestion, “the one up in Detroit. You said she was inviting you to her birthday party. When’s that again?”

“Anima. Dearborn. And it’s next week on the ninth. Not too long. I know she said no presents, but I was thinking maybe a scarf.”

“Always a solid choice.”

God, she missed him. Two phone calls a day wasn’t nearly enough. “Will you be awake later?” she asked quietly.

“If you need me to be.”

“I want you to be.”

“Oh, you mean for…” She could _hear_ his eyebrows.

“I mean for talking. Maybe for, yeah. But I just…” She looked at her watch and let her shoulders slump. “Just talking.”

“Talk to you soon, then,” he said softly.

“You take care of yourself,” she told him.

“You too.”

She hung up, let herself take a moment to rub her ears and clear her head, then walked back into the meeting room. Assuring them it wasn’t anything to worry about, just touching base with a friend. Sinking back down into her chair and going back to drinking her coffee, trying not to think about everything she wished she was strong enough to say.


	3. Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2010

As hotel rooms went, it was one of the nicer ones Buffy had been in: top-floor window looking out over the water, enough pillows on the bed to build a throne, a couch for lounging, real ceramic mugs for her morning coffee, and a truly luxurious bathroom. Any hotel room was automatically just a bit nicer when she wasn’t the one paying for it. Still, she figured the still-new League wouldn’t appreciate her setting a precedent of raiding the mini-bar and trying to write it off as a business expense. Even if she got away with that, it wouldn’t _do_ for her image.

Though mostly all she wanted to do right now was to close the curtains and burrow into that fabulous bed and sleep. Really _rest_ until she wasn’t tired anymore. She was pretty much running on fumes, the adrenaline and battle-high working out of her system, and she figured a good twelve hours’ sleep would do to start. Much as she wanted to get to that, there were a few things she had to do first. Like shower. Tell herself _the battle’s over and won_ with personal grooming and hygiene. Make herself believe it with fancy citron and vetiver shower gel. Stand beneath hot water that worked its way all through her muscles and pulled her out of the fight and back into the present.

Speaking of which, the water pressure in the shower brought the niceness of the hotel up a good few notches.

Spike was already in the bathroom, naked, when she stepped out of the shower. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said around the suds before going back to brushing his teeth. After what he’d had in his mouth a couple hours earlier, Buffy couldn’t blame him for making a beeline for the sink. And – it wasn’t worth the worry, it wasn’t worth the fuss, she’d just had a nice long shower, she could towel off and let him finish brushing his teeth and…

Buffy leaned around Spike and turned off the water.

He turned to look at her, face all baffled. She tried to pull an innocent look, but his expression told her he wasn’t having it. He turned the water back on to wash the toothbrush, then turned it back off again. “Why’s it you always do that?”

“Do what?” She wrapped a towel around her waist.

He gave her another _just be truthful with me_ look. “Turn off the tap like that. Every time you’re at a sink, you shut it off unless you’re fillin’ up a cup or some-such right that second.”

“Oh.” Buffy shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not, or you wouldn’t always do it.” He drew back. “It’s not…I mean, it isn’t…”

“It’s not,” she assured him. “I _promise_ there’s no problem, or I wouldn’t let you in here with me right now.”

He nodded, letting his shoulders fall. “All right, then.” He glanced back at the sink, then back to her, tilting his head curiously. “So if it’s not that, what is it?”

She sighed, looked away, then gave up and let it out. “It’s supposed to save water. It _does_ , a bit. Not a whole lot, but it was drilled into me back in grade school. It’s an old habit. I know it doesn’t do that much and there’s better things to do for the environment, but – that’s why.” Second through sixth grade, a couple days here and a week there, lesson plans and homework and lectures. It’d been a beginner’s guides to environmentalism as determined by state education experts. The most important lesson of which for California was _save your water_. Because water was everything. She still remembered the feeling of wonder when her teachers had shown her the map of where Los Angeles’s water got pumped in from, and understanding how important water was if that was what it took to get it to her. There were other lessons, too. Like eat less meat and set your lawn sprinklers at night. Take short showers where you turned off the water when you were shampooing up your hair like you were in the army. Garden with native plants that didn’t need so much water. And shut off the taps at the sink.

“I think Holland can spare a couple litres.”

“I know it can. I know it doesn’t make a _huge_ difference, but it’s just…one of those things, I guess.”

“One of _what_ things?” Spike very deliberately put the cup under the tap _before_ turning it on to fill it up. He rinsed his mouth and spat with more grace than Buffy thought anyone could have when cleaning out the last bits of toothpaste suds and demon gunk.

“Childhood things. You know what I mean. Stuff you grow up with that you can’t really shake. You know it doesn’t matter, but you can’t believe that, so you keep on doing it.”

“Right. One of _those_ things,” he said gravely, setting the cup down. Buffy glanced at the mirror, knowing she wouldn’t see him reflected there, then back at his face. It looked exactly the same, except for how the hair framing it made him look like someone new.

She’d asked him about that a while back, and both times he’d told her he wasn’t planning on bleaching it again; he was happy to try a change. Go back to an old style. The natural look of dark honey-brown with some of the tightest ringlet curls she’d ever seen. In the bathroom’s lights – gentle ones, thankfully, she couldn’t stand harsh bathroom lights anymore – the curls looked so soft. She wondered what his hair had looked like when he’d been alive, and what it’d looked like in the sun.

“Yeah,” she replied, almost absently. “That.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He nodded, looking like he was trying to pick his words carefully. Finally, he remarked, “Tell you what.” 

“What?”

“I’ll try to remember to turn off the taps if I’m not usin’ them right then and there, I won’t get shirty if I forget and you remember, and you quit teasin’ me every time I eat an orange.” Buffy drew back in surprise, and he grinned. “No, how’s about, make that anytime I eat fruit that’s fresh, even if it’s comin’ right off the tree.”

“But –” He could be so _adorable_ when it came to out-of-season fruit. She’d always known he’d liked human food, but the way he enjoyed onion blossoms and buffalo wings was a world away from the way he loved fruit. When they’d gotten to the hotel earlier that night, with Agadeemian slime almost everywhere, even between his teeth, he’d dropped all concern about his boots to focus on the complimentary fruit basket up at the front desk, grabbing the two oranges like he was afraid someone else would get to them first. He could enjoy the hell out of a plate of nachos, but he loved to high heaven a good bowl of strawberries.

“I mean –” _One of those things_. He’d grown up when food had _seasons_ and the world was so much bigger. If he’d missed that year’s blackberries, he couldn’t have gone to buy a bag of frozen ones at the grocery store. Back then, if you wanted an orange, you’d better hope the ones coming in off the docks you’d waited weeks to arrive didn’t have worms in them. He’d been around to watch the world change to one full of modern luxuries and conveniences, and he still held onto a bit of genuine delight over what had been something exciting and joyful when he’d been alive. He’d never really shaken that.

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Me, too,” he told her.

There was still a little joy in fruit all year round. These were the things you grew up with that stayed with you long past your childhood. It was one thing when it was just you at the sink, or just you nabbing the fruit at the front desk. Figuring out how to manage when you were with someone else took a completely different kind of learning. The kind you did because you _wanted_ to learn what it took to be with someone else.

“Okay.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She couldn’t resist anymore. She leaned forward and got a glimpse of Spike’s surprise as she laid a hand on his head and ran her fingers through his hair.

Obediently, he bent his head down, letting her run both her hands over his head, and she giggled as she twisted his soft-as-they-looked curls between her fingers. 

“Yeah, yeah, get it all outta your system.”

“Never,” she swore, scratching harder, making him laugh along with her.


	4. Dayton, Ohio, 2013

In the absence of Mom and with no reason to offer Dad the honor, Buffy and Giles walked Dawn down the aisle. Stepping up to the chuppah, she’d felt nothing more than the barest flinch at seeing both of Noah’s parents up there with him. It was an old, almost comfortable ache. Something about love with nowhere to go.

Looking at Noah’s face as Dawn recited her vows, written and proofed and edited three weeks ahead of time, Buffy knew her sister wouldn’t lack for love in her life. When it was Noah’s turn, his voice trembled with excitement over finally being married to Dawn. As he spoke, Buffy glanced out over the crowd – about a hundred-fifty people, friends from nearby and cousins from overseas, most of them human and a few of them not, and maybe the little kids didn’t look as emotionally moved as their parents, but everyone understood this was a happy moment.

Even when Noah stomped on the glass, the ritual reminder to hold Jerusalem above even this moment of joy, it was met with applause and cheers.

_So this is what a wedding’s supposed to look like,_ she thought, as Dawn and Noah finally kissed as husband and wife. _It’s nice._

When she’d announced her plans to convert, Buffy had been more nonplussed than anything – Mom had been a casual atheist and Dad was lapsed cafeteria Episcopalian, with the main extent of their religious education coming first from Charlie Brown and later from Giles’s majestic reference library. When Dawn explained she wasn’t just doing it to get married, how if she broke up with Noah she’d still go through with the process until she was fully a Jew, Buffy had circled around to plussed. She herself still wasn’t considering joining anything. More that, she could see why a religious and social framework that stressed learning and doing good acts and healing the holes in the world spoke to Dawn strongly enough to want to do all the work necessary to become a part of it.

Also, there was the holiday of staying up all night studying and eating cheesecake. _So_ definitely Dawn’s thing.

Plus, the food. Buffy was _not_ going to deny the food as a good reason to be Jewish. They’d gone with dairy/fish for the dinner – sweet braided challah, coconut rice pudding, marzipan flowers, smoked trout rillettes, a full-on cheese plate, bitter endive and radicchio salad, _then_ the choice of of two main courses. No one was even thinking of saving room for dessert, but everyone doing enough dancing to keep their appetites whetted and ready. They’d gone with a few live musicians hired by Noah’s dad instead of a DJ. They’d done their share of famous-people weddings, hadn’t balked at the names on the guest list, and could read a room like nobody’s business, knowing exactly when to jazz it up or blues it down.

Having three Slayers on the bride’s side and a vampire on the groom’s meant that when it came time to lift up the married couple, the chairs honestly _did_ almost get raised to the roof. There were lots of good shrieks from the chair-sitters and happy cheers from the rest of the guests and enough applause and laughter to clear out the dance floor and finally cut the cake. Dawn and Noah rested their hands together, wedding rings still bright and shiny, and pressed the knife down gently, making the first slices and lifting out the first piece and stumbling onto the first stutter of the evening when Noah offered the plate to Dawn but couldn’t see a fork anywhere. For a moment, as he glanced around to triple-check, Buffy saw the young man who wasn’t putting anything on, who was everything he said he was and nothing he wasn’t, trying to fumble his way through of a minor mishap and not caring he looked silly so long as Dawn got her cake.

He turned to the assembled guests, all looking on expectantly, and smiled apologetically. “Could you –” he started.

“Just use your fingers!” Spike shouted loud enough for everyone to hear clear across the banquet hall.

Noah blushed, Dawn laughed, and everyone applauded as he gently broke off a tiny bit of the corner piece – _maximum crust potential,_ Buffy thought – and gently placed it in her mouth, neatly as he could, and then she did the same for him. And that was that. Hands were wiped clean and the rest of the cake was portioned up, handed out, and taken back to tables to eat sitting down with utensils. Or, in the case of a few outliers, eaten standing up against the back wall.

“See, I have _some_ good ideas,” Spike told Buffy quietly as he licked his fork. “Should keep on listening to me.”

“I won’t deny it was romantic,” Buffy said. “Just maybe not that sanitary.”

“Long as they’re only feedin’ each other, where’s the harm in it?”

“I’ll give you that one.” Buffy leaned against the wall, not minding the potential wrinkles in her dress, and nibbled the slice to make it last longer. After Xander and Anya’s not-a-wedding, they’d had enough leftover catering to avoid grocery shopping and cooking for nearly two weeks, but they’d lost interest in the cake after three days. The one Dawn picked out wasn’t anything like Anya’s, which had more or less been a wedding dress in cake form with about as much flavor as a generic yellow cupcake. The only frosting on Dawn’s cake were the flowers on top, leaving the cake itself nearly naked but letting the flavors of the lavender and bergamot and vanilla shine through.

Without needing to be asked, Spike took her plate when she was done, and put it on a nearby collection table. 

“Thanks,” she said. 

He waved it off with a smile.

Jewish weddings had bridesmaids and groomsmen, but they didn’t have a mandated dress code like in all the big romantic comedy movies. What you had to wear was mostly suggestions and guidelines based on the individual wedding’s selected colors and level of formality. Noah had asked people to dress up ‘very nicely’ and sent out a few pictures of the intended color scheme with some notes on what would be acceptable for a modern Orthodox event. Even if it wasn’t in a synagogue, it was still a fairly religious event.

It was mostly suggestions, with a handful of unwavering rules, which was why Spike was in a kippah.

There wasn’t anything inherently holy about those. A kippah was a symbol for a lot of things, and it wasn’t a channel for belief or a conduit for a higher power. It was something worn by people in certain conditions for a given set of reasons and purposes. Not holy like the tallit that’d covered the chuppah, which Noah had warned Spike about ahead of time, or like Dawn’s ketubah, which had surprised everyone, even Giles and the rabbi, when it’d burned Spike’s finger when he’d accidentally touched it.

_“I suppose that since it’s a holy document…”_ Giles had said quietly.

_“Yes, but it’s not like people are folding them up for anti-vampire attack paper airplanes,”_ Noah had said, cutting the tension and relaxing the room. _“There’s a journal we can write this up for, right?”_

_“Let’s worry about that tomorrow,”_ Dawn had told him, and the pre-wedding signing ceremony moved on from there. 

That, and the cake, were the biggest snags to the day. Buffy knew it wouldn’t be completely snag-free. There were the things ahead of time, like trying to find a non-religious venue, and small moments on the day of the wedding itself, like trying to find parking.

Another thing that wasn’t quite a snag, wasn’t exactly a stumble, but was something which couldn’t be avoided: the dinner followed strict kosher protocol, which meant a couple of the guests couldn’t eat properly until much later into the night. Eat and drink for fun, sure. And still not quite really be a part of things. Staking out in the uncanny valley.

Now that the cake had been shared and eaten and a few more drinks had been had, the musicians were changing the tone of the room. Slowly, gently, music began that was made for slow dancing. It was Dawn and Noah out first, gently swaying in each other’s arms. Nobody had joined them yet.

Buffy looked around the room – at Xander and Stephanie, at Willow and Margaret, Giles and Olivia, even Andrew and Timothy, at everyone who’d come as a family or by themselves. There were people with most of their lives gone and those with decades standing ahead of them. She deliberately took Spike’s hand, and began leading him through the room, past all the tables, in sight of every single guest, and out onto the dance floor.

“All right, all right, woman,” he chuckled, taking her into his arms, both of them giving themselves over to the moment and the music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to [GingerKI](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerKI) for being smart enough to have Giles and Olivia get back together in her post-canon stories, which was too good an idea not to use in mine.
> 
> Additionally, Dawn's wedding cake is based on [this recipe](https://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/2170245032/earl-grey-cake-with-chocolate-lavender-frosting/). I've made it myself, modifying it slightly by leaving off the frosting and adding lavender to the tea leaves, and trust me: it's a showstopper.


	5. Sebastopol, California, 2058

The only times gardening had ever been on Buffy’s radar was whenever Mom had her weed the flower beds. Sometime around when Spike started rambling on about composting and drip systems, she knew she was done for. Not that she was upset about it. Hobbies were good things to have, and they had the space and time a proper garden really needed. It was the kind that took years to get looking good and needed a full staff to keep looking nice, complete with fruit trees and benches and all sorts of flowers.

A full staff, or one determined vampire who’d been looking for something to fill up his nights and a Slayer willing to help out said vampire in sundry and assorted ways, from carting around loads of good mulch to tagging along to local nurseries.

She didn’t know why she was surprised when he started throwing himself into the project. It wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ make plans and see them through, the treasure-hunting, soul-earning, battle-strategizing vampire that he was. He just usually didn’t bother. But he’d said something about maybe starting a garden, she’d made a few comments how she’d like one too, and now here they were.

None of the nurseries in town or nearby were open long enough past sunset to make waiting for night worthwhile. They’d have maybe twenty minutes, tops, of looking around and trying to figure out what would work together and in which spots and areas before having to leave. Spike needed time to saunter around, see what they had, ask all sorts of questions about partial shade for optimal blooming conditions as they occurred to him and get real-time answers instead of making a lot of phone calls and sending out a bunch of emails.

So instead, he’d saunter around in a coat, boots, gloves, hat, scarf, parasol, plus a pair of heavy goggles that were thankfully unlike the ones he’d worn that attempted John Carpenter’s Escape from Sunnydale. Spike maneuvered through the sunlight carefully, almost gracefully, handling the parasol deftly and easily and never letting a single beam come close to falling on any exposed skin. 

_“Years of practice,”_ he’d told her when he’d shown off the vintage parasol a few weeks ago, standing on the lawn in a t-shirt to show her how safe it was. _“Height of fashion when I was a kid. Look it up.”_

 _“I didn’t know they were going for total sun blockage,”_ she’d said, trying not to run out and throw a blanket over him.

 _“You’d be surprised what people did to look dead back then,”_ he’d grinned, and spun around to wind her up.

Now, today, she felt a _little_ better seeing him in the entire get-up. That he was clearly and obviously enjoying himself at every bush and flower, even tugging off a glove a few times to rub a petal or leaf between his fingers, didn’t stop her worrying. It just gave her something else to feel besides the worry. Something warm and light.

“Can I help you?” 

Buffy turned around towards the owner of the unfamiliar voice, glancing down at the woman’s nametag and looking back up to meet her eyes.

“No, but thanks,” she told Josephine. “I’m just browsing.”

“All right. If you have any questions, or need anything, you just let me know.” She kept her voice pitched up, exuding cheerfulness, and said each word carefully, making sure Buffy heard each sound. It was a very specific kind of customer service tone she’d been hearing a lot since she’d gone gray. “Anything at all,” Josephine reaffirmed.

“I’ll be sure to,” Buffy said, with just as big a smile on her face, and stepped off to sniff another set of white flowers. “Hey.” Josephine turned around. “Is it true white and pale flowers are better smelling than bright ones?”

“Generally, yes, though of course selective breeding with certain flowers, roses being perhaps the best example, can produce a vividly colored petal as well as a strong scent.” The words slipped out easily, no hesitation or concern. Her voice went smooth, too, out of customer service and into someone who honestly loved her job. “If scents are what you’re after – are they?”

“Kind of. It’s not for me. I mean – I’m not going to be doing a lot of the gardening. I’ll be _enjoying_ the garden. But the, um, person I’m with, it’ll mostly be him doing the work. So I’m just curious right now.”

“Is he here right now?” she asked.

“Yes, but I think he’s already got a good idea of what he wants.”

“That’s very nice. Are you sure there’s nothing you need right now?” 

“Sure enough. Well, in any case,” Buffy said fast, steering the conversation as best she could, “if I need anything, I’ll come find you. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Josephine returned to making her rounds through the outdoor paths.

Buffy went to find Spike, who was busy inspecting something with compound purple flowers and a smattering of small bees. At first glance, she thought it might be lavender, but on closer inspection, it was just a lookalike. She squinted at the small sign. Woolly bluecurls, apparently.

“How much lawn are we keeping?”

“Not too much.” Spike pulled his scarf down and leaned over the bush to better smell it, shifting the parasol as he did. “No more than what we’d really put to good use. What’ve we got to prove with one?”

“That we own enough land to _have_ one.”

“Hardly worth the fuss with all the upkeep it’d take,” he sniffed dismissively. “A bit out front, some in back, rip out the rest. Well, cover it up, really. No sense in paying someone to cart away good sod. Anyways, we got the corners around the house, no need to do a lot of work on those – we’ll start with some bushes like this, for bees and such, and out back it’ll be more for the –”

“Can I –?” Both Buffy and Spike turned at the sound of Josephine’s voice. And oh boy, the stumble and recovery on her face when she saw Spike and then _really_ saw him was one of the more graceful ones Buffy had seen in a good while.

“Still just browsing,” Buffy said. No way was she backing down from this. No way was she going to be anything less than shameless about being in public with a vampire.

“Right.” Josephine nodded furiously, and Buffy glanced at Spike out of the corner of her eye: throwing his smile out, no teeth on display, sincerely insincere. The goggles were reflective, but she could imagine the sharpness behind them easily enough. “If you’ve got anything…”

“I do,” Spike said, calling her bluff and then some. 

Buffy stepped back, trying not to enjoy herself, as Spike asked about nitrogen fixers, native pollinators, raised beds, deep watering technology, dry-soil plants’ native range, night blooming flowers _besides_ jasmine, good questions that he had follow-up ones for at the ready. 

Josephine didn’t flinch, managed not to stumble over her words too much, and when Spike was finished, didn’t immediately turn her back to him the way she had for Buffy. This was, generally speaking, a pretty smart move when dealing with a known vampire. If she knew it was Spike and not just some random vampire, she might’ve shown genuine respect. But she hadn’t. It was almost comforting, to see her perturbance over him.

Buffy didn’t miss how the world used to be. In pretty much every way that mattered, she was happy with the one she was living in and all the hard work she’d put in to change things to how they were now. It was that she’d learned certain things hard and early, and seeing people remember them – she couldn’t put a name to the feeling of _being comforted by something deeply uncomfortable._ But it was there just the same.

Spike and Buffy ended up with a couple pallets of small flowers, some herbs, and a few small bush starters. Nothing too fancy until they got more of the ground prepped. Fruit trees could be delivered for a nominal fee, which would still be less than renting a truck, making it a price Buffy would be happy to pay.

Inside the nursery’s main building, with his parasol tucked under Buffy’s arm, and his hat and gloves and goggles stuffed in his coat’s pockets, Spike didn’t appear to set off any major vampire alerts to the non-Slayers among the crowd. Even so, she’d gotten a glimpse of Josephine talking to George up at the counter while Spike had been inspecting the bags of fertilizer, and while George seemed to know how to hold himself, Buffy could tell he was _working_ on how to hold himself.

He knew she and Spike were together, for whatever reason.

Buffy liked to pay in cash whenever possible, but there were some occasions which called for attaching her name to the purchase and seeing the expression on the clerk’s face. The switch flipped from _mildly uncomfortable_ right over to _utterly apologetic_ in a bare instant. When she thanked George for all his help, her smile was genuine for all the wrong reasons.

Spike stood by while she loaded up the car, parasol out and goggles back on for daytime driving, and didn’t offer to lend a hand when they got home, either – he directed her where everything was to be unloaded, and then quickly scuttled inside. Which she wasn’t blaming him for. It was still a few hours to sunset, and there wasn’t any need to try to make a big show when it was just the two of them.

“Well, that was fun,” he said, hanging his coat up. “Wouldn’t you say that was fun?”

“Depends on how you count fun. If by fun you mean making people squirm – yeah, I guess it was.” He smiled at her, and pulled her in for a kiss so that she had to tilt her head to avoid the goggles. He pulled them up to rest against his hair and she couldn’t stop the giggle. He always looked like an old-timey biplane pilot with them like that. It was a good look for him.

A few hours later, he was kneeling in the dirt, tools scattered around, digging down to get the herbs in. “Oh, thanks, love,” he smiled, taking the cup of haema happily. He took a sip, then a gulp, then set it down to get back to the plants.

“You were saying about keeping some lawn out back?” Buffy asked.

“Yeah, some,” he said. “For Dawn’s brood when they come visiting. It’s nice, sitting out on a lawn at the end of the day, having a few drinks.” He waved a hand, encompassing the small piece of turf he was kneeing on and going all the way out to the far ends of their property. Just over four acres didn’t seem like much, but Buffy could tell she’d come to know it quickly enough. She welcomed that. “Be easy enough to let the stuff at the edges go wild, toss some natives in there and let nature take its course, leave a little spot for guests and parties, I’ll put in the work for that.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Keep me company.”

“By all means. But just one moment.” This time, it was for all the right reasons that she was smiling: a bit of cheekiness when she came out a few minutes later with a blanket under her arm. “Hey there.” He chuckled at her faux coyness. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.” He gestured to the ground right next to him. She lay the blanket down and settled on it carefully. 

The April night was perfect: not too warm and not too cool. It was the kind of night to be enjoyed for hours and hours, and she was more than ready to start that with the man she loved. A small, simple luxury that not all that long ago, she didn’t think she’d ever get to enjoy. Her, Spike, a little place of their own, and knowing she’d long ago put in the work to keep their nights together peaceful.

Better hurry up and enjoy herself as soon as she could, then.


End file.
